Walk a Mile in Your Ski Boots

MARCH 2011 Accelerating Engineering Innovation .com Walk A Mile in Your By Beth Stackpole, Contributing Editor, Design Hardware & Software Ski Boots As avid users of the company’s own products, Black Diamond engineers translate intimate knowledge of customer requirements into optimal designs for extreme climbing and ski gear. here are few things the couple of runs or do a short climb before stay in sync with the needs of its customers. product development heading off to work. “It’s all part of the Black Diamond culture team at Black Diamond Job candidates interested in an engi- — within the design department, we’re Equipment takes more neering role at the manufacturer of high- always testing out some sort of prototype seriously than its pre- end climbing and ski gear are subjected to gear,” says Ben Walker, Black Diamond’s Tdawn ski runs or rock climbing sessions. the same hard-core regime as part of the director of R&D. “The biggest challenge A couple of times a week, depending on interview process. It’s not just about bond- our type of products present is that it forc- the season, the team meets up at around ing or feeding a shared love of extreme es the design team to understand what it 4 a.m. and logs the uphill journey in the sports. Rather, these early morning expe- is our customers want and need. You can dark through the Utah canyons to catch a ditions are a key way the firm’s engineers look at market research or study up on Design Software & Hardware to the equipment since it’s used under such extreme circumstances. “Whether you’re a mountaineer on a peak in the Himalayas or a skier on the edge of their ability, your focus and concentration is on what the body is doing, and the gear needs to disap- pear into the background,” says Walker. For that reason, Black Diamond’s guiding design principle is minimalism, even austere design. “Our gear can’t have anything that’s superfluous,” he explains. “We need to understand how the gear is used … so we can give them everything they need — exactly that and nothing more.” Balancing Act The engineering challenge to achieve that vision varies depending on the product category. In the case of carabiners, the clips used to affix ropes while climbing, the design challenge is all about keeping the form simple and minimizing weight. For skis and ski boots, Black Diamond engineers are chasing a completely different objective, aiming for the highest performance without any extras that would impede the user experience. With these kinds of products, the challenge typically involves innovative use of cutting-edge materials like composites, carbon, air- craft-grade aluminum, different glue and epoxy technologies and polyether block amide (known in the industry as PEBAX) in order to achieve performance and hit optimal weight goals. To strike the balance, Black Diamond employs a variety of 3D design tools, in- cluding CAD, surfacing programs and FEA platforms. One of the most impor- tant initiatives was to embrace tools and workflows that fully integrate industrial design and engineering. Unlike consumer Black Diamond’s culture calls for engineers to partake in the sports they design for as a way products like cars, which have a lot of en- to stay in sync with customer needs. gineering surrounded by a beautiful shell, most of Black Diamond’s products require these activities, but it’s not easy to watch treme climbing gear, from carabiners and form and function to be built into the someone climbing and get a true under- rappels to ice axes and crampons. Because same part, which requires a change in pro- standing of what they’re doing or how Black Diamond customers tend to be elite cesses so that industrial designers and en- they’re using the equipment. You have to skiers or climbers, not recreational users, gineers can work in parallel to ensure flaws be in their shoes to truly understand what they take their gear seriously so it’s criti- or manufacturing issues are caught early in they want.” cal the engineering team does the same. the process. For Black Diamond engineers, it’s not Rather than chasing after the latest bells Consider the development of Black walking in customers’ shoes that counts, and whistles, Black Diamond customers Diamond’s carabiner product line, the but rather strapping on their ski boots or are all about performance and reliability iconic Hotwire product reintroduced knowing exactly what’s required from ex- because they’re often entrusting their lives last spring with the goal of reducing Design Software & Hardware weight and updating aesthetics. Using the NX CAD tool from Siemens PLM Software and the Autodesk Alias industrial design suite, Black Diamond cre- ated a process by which the same surfaces and models pulled together in NX by the engineering group were simultaneously worked on by the industrial design group using Autodesk Alias without los- ing design intent and without having to redo surface work as the models were passed between the packages. Engi- neers took the first pass at the new carabiner design in CAD, next employing Nastran Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tools to optimize materials and weight, then handing the work-in-progress back NX’s Shape Studio freeform modeling capabilities are employed to directly manipulate over to industrial design, which further surface geometry to capture the anatomical nuances of the foot. refined the models for aesthetics. Un- like traditional processes, there were no passing back and forth of stripped-down IGES files and nothing lost in translation — a change that greatly accelerated the new carabiner’s time to market. “With this collaborative approach, industrial designers and mechanical engineers were able to work simultaneously on the same surfaces using the same tools,” Walker explains. The results of this approach are pretty impressive. Black Dia- mond was able to reduce the weight of the Hotwire Carabiner from 45 to 37 gm. A follow-on product, the Hoodwire Cara- biner, to be released later this year, pushes the envelope even further, packaging the same lightweight design with new pat- ented technology that enables snag-free clipping and the inability to freeze up under frigid alpine conditions. Heavy FEA use was instrumental in achieving performance goals on Black Diamond’s freetouring ski boots. FEA to the Rescue Black Diamond’s Fusion technical ice more weight with the older design after gressive performance goals on its freetour- tool is another example of a redesign we did the (FEA) analysis,” says Brendan ing ski boots, which combine the perfor- project that benefited from the early in- Perkins, design engineer at Black Dia- mance of a traditional alpine ski boot with tegration of engineering and industrial mond. Starting with a clean slate, the en- the flexibility of a hiking boot for skiers design. The tool, used in ice climbing on gineering team gave the designers a basic wanting to access terrain outside of re- severe alpine terrain, was earmarked for a mockup of what the ice tool’s wall thick- sort boundaries. “If we’re constantly being redesign that called for weight reduction ness should be along with other critical driven by customers to create equipment in the neighborhood of 10 percent as well design elements like pick angle and ap- that doesn’t sacrifice from a performance, as an updated look. FEA analysis factored proximate shaft size. Using the same it- strength or safety standpoint, yet is still get- heavily into the redesign, especially after erative design workflows, the team came ting lighter and lighter, the only way to do the team determined it wasn’t an option up with a new hydroformed aluminum that is through tools like FEA,” Wa lker says. to simply reduce materials or the size of shaft design that was 9.4 percent lighter. “Previously you might get to an optimized the original design to achieve its goals. Heavy FEA use was instrumental to design through engineering know-how “We didn’t feel we could safely reduce Black Diamond’s quest to achieve its ag- and experience, but at this point, further Design Software & Hardware Black Diamond customers, mostly elite skiers, are looking for performance and reliability when it comes to their gear. gains won’t come through those means. If you’re more than 400 enthusiasts around the world, not using tools like FEA, you’ve already fallen be- the Black Diamond development team is an hind or you rapidly will.” integral asset. Benchmarking of prototypes In addition to FEA, innovative materials use, and competitors’ products occur regularly and a process that addresses engineering, indus- in the lab and the company has a several hun- trial design and manufacturability as an integrat- dred thousand dollar freezer environment ed function was also core to the development of rigged up, where it does special testing on ski the Quadrant and Prime, the latest additions to boots in extreme weather conditions using the freetouring boot family. Th e boots combine a full data acquisition environment and Nation- a blend of PEBAX and polypropylene materials al Instruments’ LabVIEW. to achieve the optimal weight and performance Even with all the formal testing, it’s the Black characteristics, and additional innovations such as Diamond team that is the best judge of what the Boa closure system (a cable system that replaces works and what doesn’t. “These sports are so laces on snowboard boots) were brought into the ingrained in the psyche of every person here,” family to deliver performance without adding Walker says.

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